


Collections of You

by c0ld_handz



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altered Mental States, Blood and Violence, Descriptions of gore, I cried writing this :/, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Keith (Voltron)-centric, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Breakdown, Mental Instability, Mentioned Allura (Voltron), Mentioned Blades of Mamora (Voltron), Mentioned Coran (Voltron), Mentioned Hunk (Voltron), Mentioned Lance (Voltron), Mentioned Pidge (Voltron), Mentioned Space Mice (Voltron), Mentions of Other Voltron Paladins, Minor Violence, Other, This Keith is an angst ball, and so am i, but he'll feel better, descriptions of violence, he's not doing so hot, minor gore, mostly happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-20 10:57:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11919459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c0ld_handz/pseuds/c0ld_handz
Summary: It’s not vicious enough to be called anger, he knows how to handle that. This is a more complacent thing that sits and waits within grasp just to trod enough to be able to elude his full comprehension. He wants to scream at its mockery. He wants to pry open its secrets even if it costs him bloodied fingers and cracked joints. Needs to know the definition of its presence because each minute he waits is another lost to the echoing sound of footsteps that haunt his every dream. Another tick closer to the moments that he knows to be paramount when he cannot manage this self-projection calmly. By the time he believes his eyes can no longer tear from its ferocity, he finds himself corrected when the next person he meets fails to leave him willingly.





	Collections of You

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place a few months after S2 ends because I was an angst ball before I watched S3. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy! <3

The ringing is low and thriving. Always a steady constant, even when it is not truly there to remind him. It tinges the back of his neck. Makes the hairs stand on end when he begins to realize, the sound is only getting louder with each breath he takes and will remain with him until his last.

He walks through the quiet halls in the Garrison. The call for “Lights out” has long since passed and empty space remains as his only companion. His hearing is filled with a tampered volume of the thrumming that never really ceases. It’s echoes repeat loudly enough through memory alone. The step by step gaits that adhere to his movements do nothing to muffle the sound haunting his ears. He grits his teeth against its pull. 

In attempts to drown out the confining thing with a fist meeting the familiar push of a punching bag, and heavy, calming breaths, he merely remedies the silence of the halls surrounding him. 

Within the addled sounds of his fatigue, he begins to recognize whispers made from bright bursts of bellowing laughter that resonate with the ringing plaguing his mind. Ironically, it still feels as though the elated noise is muddled, dirty water that stains a mirror and is being reflected back at him. 

Once, these walkways knew of joy that came in short spurts from a stature much less steady than its daily runs implied. Once, they knew of a leaning figure just outside of the training room where softly murmured advice invaded his space with the temptation of human interaction. Suggestions that he had surprisingly found not completely obtuse, accompanied by the comforting weight of a hand on his shoulder guiding his motions, adorned his confidence. Once, he was able to stare into bright gray lights not emitting from the blinding fluorescents, but from the soul who coaxed him to join the living. The soul who spent the time to decipher the meaning of the cracked, jagged edges that made up his entirety without the fear of getting cut. 

He has seen the man alight with wonder before. Has watched as the soft jubilation coming from gray eyes greets his own with a warmth he believes is fondness. Hopes to be the one persuading him to find the heights of affection growing in his own chest at the sight. Prays that he is not alone in this new feeling. Their tentative relationship that began with ‘an understanding’ ends up already tipping precariously between the lines of friendship and more. An idea he hasn’t acknowledged as one of his own since he last remembered a promise not kept. 

The endearing sight before him shatters when the sound of an irritatingly pretentious voice enters his conscious. While Iverson’s speech is well-known to him, his mind still recoils in outrage. The two words consisting of the practiced lie lurks around the audience and spreads it’s virus like wildfire that everyone fails to realize is suffocating them. It winds around it’s captives until their memories of the man they talk about rots within the ashes it leaves behind. This monstrous man in front of him is attempting to sum up what he knows to be a lie meant to placate those who comprise of the general public. They fail to reveal the truth of the man he still reveres. 

On the verge of hysteria, and having no one-again-to coax him from this agony of half truths and solemn regrets, he keeps hitting the bag until his hands threaten to break. Until his legs give out while his knuckles’ skin has turned a vicious red and tinted white. Both colors that he wishes to watch don the face of the Garrison’s Commander, who now corrodes the image of a former cadet he once boasted about.

In finding the solution for silence, he realizes he has yet to learn the cure for his own lacking resonance. It doesn’t hide within the crevices of all that constitute of his being, but neither is it something to be labeled as compliant. It burrows within him only to ooze out of his body, overflowing without warning when his defenses against it are null and void. His armor is misshapen. Has been since that delicate piece of stardust left his side. Now he is only able to gape when the emotion taints his actions despite his intentions. A constant that never fails to oppose his consent. 

It’s not vicious enough to be called anger, he knows how to handle that. This is a more complacent thing that sits and waits within grasp just to trod enough to be able to elude his full comprehension. He wants to scream at it’s mockery. He wants to pry open its secrets even if it costs him bloodied fingers and cracked joints. Needs to know the definition of it's presence because each minute he waits is another lost to the echoing sound of footsteps that haunt his every dream. Another tick closer to the moments that he knows to be paramount when he cannot manage this self-projection calmly. By the time he believes his eyes can no longer tear from its ferocity, he finds himself corrected when the next person he meets fails to leave him willingly. 

Instead, they stand beside him. Countering, again and again, the accusations that stain his reputation with a fist people call witt and respect from Officers long acquainted. This man’s faith in him remains an unyielding force that he fumbles over himself to catch. Hoping to stay worthy of such trust and attempting to do so by not allowing any suspicion of his own actions.

And when the time comes for him to have a confidence that this man will return, not for Earth, but for him, he finds he has no reason not to believe. Yet that does little to help the crumbling wall of delusions that he fabricated about his head. Does nothing to assure him when the word from the mission is that there is no word. Reduces the size of his capacity of functioning to no larger than a fingernail. 

He holds something close to himself that's far too tender to be labeled hatred, but he hasn’t had it be called anything other than that from those he has met so far. The one exception having disappeared as the dust from his travels in the desert sands when he searches. 

It’s not until he is sitting back at his old shack that his memories of how to feel revive themselves amongst the dust and stars alike. When he watches the last bits of moonlight fade into the dawn and knows a feeling that wasn’t supposed to be here eb through him collectively, he wants to gasp out a laugh. What he once considered home, is now lost to the empty void of space. Has been united with it’s kin once more, but will evade him for an ever standing eternity. It does not matter that his convictions had seemed stable enough to lean on for support. It does not matter that the Garrison held no light for him after the one who found him left. It does not matter that he cannot tell the difference between a name or an emotion, when the only ones there are himself and the songs that the desert sings to him.

When he does finally tire of his own company and venture out looking for more beings other than himself to exist with, he uncovers a small town. Surprisingly, the tune he uncovers there is not one of mourning, but of questioning. Something he finds himself doing quite a bit of lately. 

He wants to laugh, because this thing is not something even based on sensible thought. It’s more akin to that of a lifetime of self-directed torture. He wants to blame the universe for being something that doesn’t care, but how can he, when he realizes that going through the actions gives him nothing more than physical exertion?

It confounds him to no end when he finds himself in the wrong for an action he didn’t feel like he was physically there for. Even if the cause of the event began with him in the first place. It doesn’t slowly creep up on him and take it’s time tearing him apart. 

Instead, the vicious thing is so ingrained into his being that it carelessly rips through his defenses until he is left alone amongst the stars. Staring longingly at what they have, which he does not. 

One of them has thoughts so ingenious in nature that they threaten to redefine the meaning of galaxies, civilizations, and universes. They find ways to reconstruct long lost languages and emulate cultures of the forgotten through small glimpses of it in their daily lives. They have the will of a love like all do. Bound by family they once knew, and yet still free as they roam the infinite area humans call space. Forever diligent in their searching, but reminded in it that they have possibilities of answers. Not rewards.

The other has wit beyond his years and a supportive chef of a friend to lean his back against when sarcastic or ironic laughing gets the best of him. He hides his knowledge by sheer bouts of comedy in order to remedy frayed nerves and dying embers of hope. He is quick to rally to challenges and even quicker with a laser gun. Long distances are his friends, and jokes, his armor. He relies on a solid presence made of muscle and anxiety both. Calms with his nature of exuberance and eases others into small talk that is at times, minimal in nature, but relievingly obnoxious all the same. 

His hoverboard of a friend never fails to hold strong against the nudges he gives to others. He proves himself with actions that backup his words. He becomes a steady weight to those in need. His nature is more muted than that of his louder friend and is all the more amicable to deal with because of it. He bakes to alleviate the stress that lingers within him. Aids with his intelligence of theories and over analyzes points to brinks of anxiousness. He gets the least ideal work for the team done. Acknowledging that if he is not the one to do it, they would have to leave their fates to the mercy of a dictator, who consumes the life of uncountable cultures without much thought.

She has the castle to commandeer, preserving her long lost plethora of knowledge upon her planet into a small, condensed iota of what it once was. She laments the people who betrayed her own. Vowing not vengeance, but something akin to that of justice for those who cannot withstand the tyranny that overcame trillions after their resistance festered into nothingness. Her stance holds true when she comments on the values of those who they free. Her mourning for her family always dealt a grace that others fail to see the despair in. Her thoughts seem akin to that of clouds which drift in and out of the sun’s rays. Obscuring the pain she masterfully knows, and occasionally disperses when the telepathic mice she sleeps with conjoin around her. Their light air of steady constance remaining a simple but effective way to cool down unshed tears, rip apart moments of unbearable sorrow, and remind her that nostalgia is not a place, but a feeling. One she can indulge in when those about her are not looking to harshly for a political or militarian gain. One burden in the universe she considers herself lucky that she does not have to shoulder alone. 

Her advisor, who is drone-like in tongues, knows how to nurture with a well timed hand on the back and a softly whispered concern of care. He curates in the olden days of his youth, making time seem more equivalent to something languid than that of the harrowing thing it truly is. They bask in his pasts circumstances. Confounded methods which are disturbingly intelligent or absurdly ridiculous appear within it and they smile at it with breathlessness when the tale ends.

He wants to laugh at the support beams they place upon one another. Not quite oblivious that his own is gone and yet unable to obtain the same warmth that his lover used to. Watches as the foundations quietly crumble, the image becoming a grainy film from the once crisp angles of a person standing in front of him. They dissipate, as if concepts alone were what he was leaning on and not a solid body that could fill the room with warmth. Not the strong muscles that could secure his headspace safely back from the heights of anxiousness and revelation. But thoughts are all he has left. They are what he is leaning on now.

He once had them as assurances in the form an individual. Things he thought would not leave twice after they had disappeared without a trace. Both times leaving behind the unsteady footing that he now remains chained to. He doesn’t guide his family onto the unstable rocks he sets his own balance on because he is watching them fall away as soon as he catches glimpses of them. 

His friends search his eyes for the nuclear reaction of a person they know the name of. They only gain thrashes from his body, retreating in placating surrender to his screams of anger as he believes in that moment, their eyes are a golden yellow and skin a glaring purple. Uniforms not sanctioned by the Blades of Marmora, but grey, glowing light pink, and telling all the same. The characteristics of the wretched holders of only one specific hostage he cares for. Has always cared for. Had relished while he was near and collapsed into himself when he was gone. He redefined the basic functions of living whenever someone was in his presence. Reformed the way that Keith thought of light.

The cold grasp of that emotion takes hold and he wants to scream desperately. Wants to hold on so that the monster he is revealed for in front of his misfit team he calls a family will remain tamed, unarmed, and disciplined by their accusatory looks alone. But if there is one thing that he refuses to abide to-it is the restriction of the freedom he was never given in the first place. 

“You expect to go through life like that? Like an astronaut? If that’s so, how come you can’t float to your lunch, huh? There’s no gravity in space, Stupid.”

“Wow your Dad didn’t show up for Parent’s Career Day. How much does he really care about you?”

“Your Mom left you both... Why am I not surprised?”

“Were you ever really loved in the first place, Kogane? If that is even your real last name!”

“No wonder you are such a loner! Your parents didn’t even want you!”

“You’re being reckless again Cadet! If you ever want to pilot better than that Kerberos Failure, you have to start with the intricacies of the simulation, not the maneuvers!”

The insolent words from brash childhood assault him again and again. He bares the cultivating rage onto that of solid steel, unresisting punching bags, drones that activate and shut down with a wave of the hand or a well said sentence. Lets the burn of it wash over him. Fuel for simple needs. Saving face in the times when he originally could not. Creating a better version of a warrior to the likes of which they had never seen before. To the likes of which he worries and shudders at night staying up late to think about. 

He wants to greet pounding flesh with rough nails that leave gashes and overflowing blood in their wake. He wants to know what it is to lay polluted and dematerializing claws onto the press of a wind pipe’s last futile contractions. He wants to see the destruction he creates. It’s the one thing he knows he is good for after all. That is all that truly matters anyways. In a land where everyone says words they don’t mean, and actions they do, he finds the constant and allows it to settle into his bones. Lets it’s presence permeate his body until he is bound within truth. Until he cannot separate from it ever again. Yet, while the physical is possible, his mind still refuses the absoluteness of it in it’s entirety.

But when he returns to his body once more, there are no longer arms restricting him. No weight around him but his own. No warmth save for the breathes he exhales into the frost-like prism of a room he calls his living quarters. No desert sands to wift away his thoughts of betrayal of himself. Betrayal of his heritage. Betrayal of the histories and turmoil of lies mingling with murder that his people have accomplished without his own knowledge. Betrayal of secrets unkept or not given when the right to know had been ingrained in his bones since he first was able to form a proper sentence and ask. 

He wants to cry, but he finds that the burning sensations along his cheek are nothing more than the figments of his imagination. The white walls encompassing his form threaten to lean closer still, and he suddenly can’t remember how to breathe. How does one breathe when all they can see, feel, or hear is the numbing silence and putrid, glaring white lights above themselves? When the ringing abandons them? How does one breathe when the support of a beating heart lives in another human being and not the body that imitates it’s home? How does one breathe when jello takes the place of air and all you have left are emptied lungs filling with poison? 

Why kick someone in the heart when you can make one lung deflate, target the other organs later and slowly watch them suffocate in their pain instead? 

He comes back to himself in small doses. 

Remembers that his hands are his own. They react when he does and pulls them back to feel the sting of newly cut skin. Watches as the nail-shaped wounds begin to thicken with blood. He begins to scramble to the bathroom to wash off the evidence, but the thought of a mirror makes him freeze, pain moving along his arms into his gut at the mere mention from his concious of what he has done to his team. 

He realizes that the thudding sound he thought was coming from the doorway in front of him was actually emanating from his chest. 

Notices that he can control the fall of his hair on his face and brushes it back, all the while considering tying it to get rid of the sticking strands. Decides against it and huffs an oddly strange sound when he takes note of the empty bed nearby. 

He forces himself to move again. Presses so harshly that the tiny shuffle his body makes in response feels like mockery. But doesn’t engage in any complaints with it since he knows after everything that he has done, he deserves no less. His body proved not to be the only thing that betrayed him. Proved not to be the only one who betrayed him either. When his hands meet the cool blade’s hilt, he sighs to himself. Let's his cheek and forearms rest close enough that he begins to believe his skin wasn’t meant to be scorching. Soaks in the fact that he is no longer enduring the prism of soullessness between Earth and it’s human society. A concept he now knows had never really applied to him in the first place. Something he had concluded never really existed for the benefit of his own sanity long ago. 

He is almost proud that he sent himself into isolation for it. Almost, because growing up in the shack taught him that he was unaffected by the thin blankets that let the cool desert air coil around his skin, but on the third night he was shivering. Body shaking from the ache to feel warmth from another pressed against him. To hear a sound originating from anything but himself or the vegetative life here. To be able to cherish the weight of an encouraging hand on his shoulders. Almost, because love was a fickle thing when he was little. Still is now, when he learned how it’s shared between two embodiments of beings. That concept of himself lost its meaning when there was no longer a witness to his own workings. So he sits, and reminds himself that the choice to escape from the corrosion that surrounded him was better than draining the little life left within his heart.

His body spent its time sending him phantom assurances of heat where there was none. It distracted him when a person placed their hand on his arm in a quiet type of support that he believed he lost. He felt the burn of it hours afterwards. 

It deposited him back to a time when he hadn't felt quite so desperate for something as mundane as human touch. That night he let images hidden behind closed eyelids, soft whispers in his ears, and the steady melody of breathing emanating from his memory bring him peace infected by pain. His subconscious deemed the lies he allowed himself unacceptable. But during his conscious moments, he would erase the building despondency with the thoughts of action, and leave on his bike the moment they threatened to drown him. 

He was speeding by when the feeling hit him. 

It breathed him in while he was passing by and made itself his home since. He saw the canons. He felt the pull of it, but could not bring his tired mind to towards the task of reciprocating the emotion’s depths. When he goes out to find it again, the call is the same. Always the same.

It’s a gently prodding thing that follows him to the desert shack that he now resides in. A sense of belonging. A pull akin to that of a mother lion pressing its nose impatiently into its cub’s fur when it had yet to move. A fierce loyalty that fostered embers of hope and new life. He dared to follow it to the source. 

Back then, he believed it to be a strong broadcast of a mixed emotion for the longing of family. He’d later come to realize that transmission was a feeble one at best.

Now he knows the feeling’s entirety. He recognizes the soft turns of Blue’s personality. Watches it pale in the connection that Red’s protectiveness lends him. Where Red is curdling senses of urgency and loyalty worthy of emulation, Blue is abundance and softly flowing nurture. 

When he figures out the coordinates, the sight before him nearly makes him stumble to his knees. Time eroded inscriptions on the cave’s walls speak of a blue lion from space. He scoffs at himself. Wonders when, exactly, he stopped toeing the line between sanity and the other side. Estimates that it was around the time he heard of The Mission lasting almost a year.

Most of the markings are still intact and he wonders how long this cave has been hidden from the elements. He wonders how deep these carvings were. Presses his fingers against it and digs into the curves he finds there to redefine the reality that stands before him. Where there was once obscurity and longing, now lies a hope he didn't think still resided in him since the departure of the person he holds most dear. 

A hope that he let lead him towards that tragically falling debri from space when the Garrison’s alarms went off. Something that felt like the precipice of a close friend returning rather than just another object that lost the battle of staying in an orbit that could allow survival.

He figures that was what brought him back to the starlight he dearly missed. What brought him back to the reminder of why he was not simply existing. He found his love once more and accompanied with it, was a new group he would soon call family.

It’s almost a Deca-Phoeb later when his team finds out about the DNA analysis. A revelation that even he had not known the existence of. They look at him with concern coupled with broken trust in their eyes when the diagnosis is given. Fright about how he is handling this new fact of himself and how the Princess’s shun's of his heritage become more lenient by the day.

He attempts to ignore the ache that builds. Ridiculing those who gave his species a bad name. Ridiculing himself for when he disconcerted as one. A cause for suspicion amongst their already small numbers is not going to help anyone, and he tries his hardest to not cause any more unnecessary waves between the rift in his team. He tries his hardest not to flinch when they show him needles called medicine and his grip makes indents on the marks of the metal hand he holds.

Occasionally, a bought of hatred and abrupt anger appear at the way he is treated. At the way his family was considering his position ‘dealt’ with. When they begin to push aside any thoughts of their own safety? He wants to laugh. He pushes their notions back towards them until he is informed by the man he looked to with a devotion unending, that they only mean to help. By the man who pestered him with friendship until he relented, that they are attempting to do the same. The man whose eyes spoke of wonder, and not the worry of those surrounding him. He describes what they found while he was in the cryopod for a week. His blood taken in doses, heartbeat still steady and thoughts encased within a mind he no longer knows how to project the truth of without fear of ridicule again.

It continues along until that anxiousness expounds when he loses that brilliant man once more to cruel fate and gains an even worse dealing of cards to play it. The castle walls, he finds, are much more accommodating in space, but lack the coziness of the shack he had the audacity to call a home when he was attempting to imitate the motions of living. The shack isn’t meant to be brimming with self loathing and mournful emptiness. Neither is the castle. Instead a softer warmth curls and unfurls at his fingertips. The one he used to know. The one he still experiences, but has become far less in measure and time since the Phoebs he started piloting Black and compromising with Red. He frowns at his reflection. His constant worry a palpable thing between his frown lines. The longer, more bony frame of his body bending with the weight of stress that is ever vigilant in it’s pushes. He takes a deep breath. Checks the comms between him and his team to make sure that his fears are still only that. Just fears. 

He’s sure his heart stops when he reads the first line. 

Then, with renewed hope of a former paladin he thought didn’t exist anymore, he sprints towards the hangar bay and does not stop until after he has his arms full of an even more muscular build than he remembers. A bit more white hair as an addition, but the same smile plastered on another’s face. The same pressurized, metallic arm activated in a blinding purple light while the opposite radiates a lesser warmth, but operates with softer touches as a hand clenching his waist.

He’s so engrossed in the illusion that he doesn’t notice the shouts or scared screaming from the other side of the glass doors. Ignores the pinging messages from the comms that create a symphony of loud clashing in the wake of their arrival. Does not register that his teammates voices are desperately attempting to get him to see reason when he’s finished running throughout the castle’s swiftly closing doors. Remains oblivious to the fact they were meaning to keep him safe from the threatening figure he is encased in now.

Pleas of “Stay back! It’s not Him, Keith!” 

“Keith you’re seeing things again!”

“Look! Watch the way He moves Keith! You know that’s not Him!”

All fall on deaf ears.

He does not notice the white hair-now shorter in his eyes-doesn’t just taper off into black like it should, but spreads throughout the complete scalp of the person who holds him close, even now. He has yet to see the armor he presses himself against is not black, white, and a fluorescent blue, but a deep amethyst and navy that blends with the depths of the space they now reside in. The colors he holds close to his heart have been slightly deteriorated by the time he lost before, and he sees them in a different light than that of which they truly are. The thoughts of claws don’t reach his consciousness and he mumbles a happy, slightly aggravated, “Shiro, I missed you so much” into their breastplate.

His holder smiles wider, pulls him closer, and whispers, “I missed you more” into his ear.

He laughs and says, “I know ‘Patience yields focus’, but please. Don’t make me wait that long for something like your return ever again.”

The answering quirk of the lips brings him a bliss he feels free to bask in. For the first time in a long one, he allows himself to indulge.

He fails to hear his teammates warnings. 

It may be Shiro’s body in Keith’s mind, but his spirit has long since gone to the astral plane. 

Shiro’s eyes glow an eerie yellow not unsimilar to the Galrans’ own. 

Keith doesn’t notice.

Remains oblivious until he looks up and finds Shiro’s face-just as he remembered from before with the exception of the hidden galaxies whispering across his skin.

Shiro’s scar holds a slightly closer fold of light than the rest of his face. His previously white tuft no longer lacking the usual length, shines with a clarity of brightness while preserving a slightly dimmed color of what it once was. The cut of his black hair is sectioned off into two parts on his head instead of one and the deepness of it tapers into the barely visible stars around his ears.

Tears of joy, wonder, and shock alight this see-through Shiro’s body and it takes Keith a moment to figure out how to stand on nothing but the stardust around him. 

Shiro keeps his hands clasped together with his own as he begins to pull away and suddenly he understands. 

His teammates will miss him, but he didn’t feel that Voltron would immediately need him either way. He knew who should’ve kept piloting Black. And that person was currently greeting him with a smile and clenching hands full of anticipation. 

He doesn’t worry because he knows, as strange as the universe is, as selfish as he feels sometimes about his actions, the lions let him go for a reason. His teammates watched him pass. He will not perish without their thoughts. He will not perish without a home. He will not perish without a family, has been guaranteed one for a while now. He will not perish with the radiant being he sees before him.

He smiles so bright that he sees the spark of it in Shiro’s eyes from his own now transparent body made of clusters and light. 

He takes another, impossible step towards Shiro. 

“It’s good to have you back.”


End file.
